


So Small

by The3ookNook



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Body Dysphoria, One Shot, Questioning, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 08:31:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14492979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The3ookNook/pseuds/The3ookNook
Summary: Katie Holt thinks about "manning up", all the different ways there are to do it and how she feels like she could never pull them off.





	So Small

 

_'It's just so small.'_

 

Katie Holt wiggled her pinkie finger, absentmindedly rolling the dough under her nail into a squishy ball. For a tick, it successfully distracted her, as Lance's excited voice came to life in between her ears. 

 

_"Haha! Check it out you guys, I've made the world's biggest dodgeball bread!"_

 

His memory materialized above the hurried handprints he left in the flour blanketing the table. Even blurred and dragged to the side, it was easy to imagine Lance's hands fitting in them. Big, if not a little thin, with long spindly fingers.

 

Yeah, big was the word.

 

 _"There's no way that's going to cook all the way through Lance,"_   _Hunk chortled._

 

Katie doesn't need anything to reimagine Hunk. He's huge. His mere presence leaves a memory, creates a sensation. It's why out of all the times she's been surprised by someone coming up behind her, it's never been Hunk. Allura, Keith and Lance all had sort of the same, tall frame, though Lance was the tallest -- much to Keth's irritation. 

 

Admittedly, Shiro was almost as distinctive. There was a confident, assured way that he walks that reminded her of doing drills. The air felt a bit different when he strides in, but only if there's someone else to react. Swimming in numbers day to day made it easy to drown out noise, so she missed those reactions. By the time she looked up, Shiro was front and center, and there was no reason to try and guess.

 

But it was impossible to drown out Hunk, as quiet as he was. Which almost made it twice as maddening. He was impossible to ignore and he wasn't even trying. She remembered an old rather boring mission made memorable only by being hoisted up onto his shoulders. 

 

They had been separated from the group only for a few minutes. Without any tech, Katie had been struggling to think of what to do when Hunk scooped her up and placed her right next to his face. He'd asked her if she saw anything, but she was too in awe to answer. Which was embarrassing in retrospect. The view hadn't been all that great. The planet was mostly a desert. She basically went from seeing some red sand and rocks to more red sand and rocks. But the switch in perspective had rendered her a little speechless until she spotted their friends waving at them from over the horizon.

 

_'So tall.'_

 

Hunk had immediately put her down. Plan Bird's Eye View had been canceled before it could really get started. Her legs dangled as he picked her up again. She spotted a salamander that easily took up all the space on the toe of her shoe grapple over Hunk's huge boot. Her stomach lagged as Hunk set her back down, knees buckling slightly as she got used to being small again.

 

_'So big.'_

 

 _"Yeah Lance, stop messing around,"_ _Keith smirked._

 

He had been in one of his better moods. Katie looked to the side, where his stool was. There's still a bit of flour on the bottom of the legs. It had gotten on his shoes, and transferred to the tall seat. Even though he had been sitting down, his feet nearly touched the floor. His slouching helped, but even as the "shortie" of the paladins he was tall. Katie wasn't called a shortie. She was a girl, it was sort of expected.

 

_"Who said dodgeball bread was for baking?" Lance straightened his back._

 

_Keith's eyes flashed, "You wouldn't dare."_

Lance's face had lit up with a certain kind of boldness Katie couldn't help but find comforting. She had seen it a million times in the reflection of screws and polished tools. Lance was built a bit more like her too. He looked lanky, as long as he wore long sleeves. Katie could never identify with Allura's more curvy figure. Plus he was easy to intimidate when she needed him to stop touching her stuff. Being assertive felt amazing, masculine. His voice definitely got higher than her's when he was upset. 

 

_Lance reeled back in her memory, dough balanced in one hand. Keith started to get off the stool, hands up as if to ward him off. Lance's athletic, toned muscles strained under his shirt --_

 

Katie winced. 

 

_\-- as he flung the giant ball of dough. Keith's mouth opens to scream in frustration as the dough hits his nose, ripples out and expands over his entire head. The weight of it throws him to the floor. His swearing is muffled as Lance loses it, tears streaming down his cheeks._

 

_He looks a bit too delighted to be called smug. Even though he's losing it, Lance keeps his eager eyes on Keith's face as the later angrily ripped the dough off. There was a sparkle there. He wanted to hear what Keith would shout at him. It was part of a game for the two of them. It was almost flirtatious._

 

A series of images ripped through the pleasant memory. Images she had grown up with; a super roided man holding a dainty woman in his arms. Great men posing heroically in posters with broad shoulders she doesn't have. Keith flirting with Allura, using his height to his advantage to lean just slightly over her. Lance flirting with an alien whose fascinated with the strong, flat muscles of his chest. Lance flirting with another alien that turns out to be a rock. 

 

Katie made a face.  _'Stop thinking about flirting with girls. Stop thinking about flirting with girls.'_

 

_Lance started to run out of the kitchen the second Keith got enough dough off his face to see. By the time he scrambled to his feet, Lance was halfway down the hall. Keith paused to catch her eyes, pointing angrily at Lance's back as he made a fist._

_"Can you believe him?" He shouts and Hunk rolls his eyes and sighs._

 

For a second, his voice surprised her. Every time Keith spoke it was like a gun. When he was calm the cylinder was spinning. His various flavors of anger were all shots. Hesitant, short-tempered and long deserved. But they were all aggressive.

 

Keith was like how she expected the garrison to behave. Or at least, how movies liked to show things like the garrison. Full of independent hotheads that weren't like the others and did things their own way. Of course, at its core, the garrison was a collective with a system maintained by huge groups of cooperative people who all knew they had to do their part. If people actually acted like that, the whole thing would fall apart. But it was hard to look at it through a nuanced lens when she thought about what happened to her father and brother. Pilot error, tsk. It was all too easy to imagine some prideful dick making up the lie behind his desk when it was really a systems failure, or an enemy attack, or --

 

 _'Do you really want to start off that too?'_ Katie forced herself to think of Keith again.

 

She had never managed to feel that aggressive. The way he seemed to be able to rile himself up was completely foreign to her. She asked Shiro about it once. He'd shook his head.

 

_"Teenage boys are just hormonal like that. They're still getting used to all the extra testosterone. I'm sure Keith will mellow out soon enough the more he gets to know us. You know," He gestured._

_'Not really,'_ Katie thought.

 

_Keith ran out of the kitchen after Lance. Hunk huffed, crossing his arms._

 

_"Can you believe those two? Now I don't have enough," He scratched his head._

 

_"Allura told me we'd still be here a little longer before we took off. You can probably grab some more stuff and be back before we leave," Katie smiled._

 

_"You're right Pidge!" He sped out of the kitchen._

 

She'd been left with the remains of the baking project. Even though things had just been stalled, she felt like cleaning up a little. It let her linger in the fresh memory, where Hunk had yelled her name and it felt extra right. Watching the boys had left her feeling strange, and hearing her nickname felt reaffirming. Even if it didn't feel quite right today.

 

 _'Quite right today?'_ Katie repeated in her head. 

 

She may have woken up on the wrong side of the day, but when did she start spouting nonsense? Today had been admittedly, a series of messes. A frenzy of inspiration during the night left her room a mess. The bathrooms had flooded. Coran had gotten sick, so Allura had tried to step in on a project the two had been working on together to little success. Yeah, "mess" was the right word. The day was a mess, lunch was now a mess, her head was a mess . . . 

 

Katie wiped down the table, knuckles turning red. Her reflection wiped with her as her buffing made the surface of the table extra shiny. Stopping, she looked at her red eyes and threw down her towel, hurrying out of the room.

 

Such a mess.

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: No one has brought it up yet, but I just want to make it clear. The "traits" of masculinity Katie/Pidge thinks of are in no way the only way to be masculine. It's just some of the first people think of thanks to themes in media (movies, books, etc.) and I think I made that clear with the Keith part and how Katie takes notes of how the boys are different too, including Hunk's gentleness and cooking hobby. I also want to say there's nothing wrong with being traditionally masculine either!


End file.
